


Ash

by jamlocked



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Some Body Gore, Suffering, aftermath of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 09:03:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10083620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamlocked/pseuds/jamlocked
Summary: It's real. It's not just a magic trick. It'sreal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a pre-cursor to [Between Their Graves](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9561596#main). Or not, as you prefer! :)
> 
> Thanks to [Toasted_Samwidge](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Toasted_Samwidge) for providing the perfect John Berger quote.

 

 _“What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell._ _One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel._ _It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”_ \- - John Berger

 

* * * 

 

**I**

 

 

There are voices in another room. They’re real, and not real, murmuring on the edge of hearing. Sherlock allows them to drift across his senses, a touchstone to life. He breathes through parted lips. He closes his eyes, and falls.

 _It’s not real_ , he thinks. _It’s not real_.

The air smells like overheated dust, coats with rain still on the collar, disinfectant on the floor, someone’s lunch from last week. People walk in here and doctors walk out; nurses, technicians, leaving one of their lives hanging in a locker, and taking another to work. He doesn’t know why he’s been put here. Anyone could arrive and see him, and that’s not supposed to happen. But he can’t move, and he was told to _stay_ so he does, because it’s easier than trying to think past the weight on his throat that chokes it from the inside. It’s different than fingers on his neck. More painful. He can’t breathe.

 _It’s not real_ , he thinks. _It can’t be real_.

But it is real. Behind the noise at the front of his mind, and the confusion swirling at the sides; stuck somewhere between the gaping howl of silence that is the centre of his brain, there’s a voice. And it’s laughing, gleeful, manic with an Irish tilt; arms spread, eyes wide, full of unholy joy. _You know it’s real_ , it says, and Sherlock wants nothing more than to land.

 

*

 

There’s another room. This one is cool shades of blue, and metal trays, and surgical scrubs hanging on the wall. It’s silent, and Sherlock changes into clothes that have been folded into a pile for him. Jeans, and a shirt, and a jumper, and a hat. His eyes pass over a case with documents, and he thinks of Europe and the safe house, and the meeting he’s about to have with his brother. But all that’s easy, just a distraction while the silence pushes out to the edges of his mind. _It can’t be real_ , he thinks, because if it is then he’ll never be the same again and he’ll never be _right_ again, and everything will be worse, so much worse, unbearably, endlessly, _worse_.

It hurts to swallow. Clever fingers that know exactly what they’re doing squeeze his windpipe. He liked it once but now, from the inside, it’s the wrong kind of pain. His lungs empty, and refuse to fill. He thinks there might be tears in his eyes, but he’s being yanked into the silence of his head and it’s not quiet, it’s not _good_ , because instead of being empty it’s full of everything he can’t afford to feel.

‘No.’

It’s the first word he’s said in an hour. He shouldn’t be able to say any words, because he’s supposed to be dead. He _is_ dead, by any rationale that matters. Except the one that really counts.

The door opens. Sherlock registers Mycroft without looking up, but the shape of him is enough to call his attention to the position he has frozen in. One hand gripping the edge of a table and the other caught in the waistband of his jeans, stuck with them midway up his thighs. His shirt is open, and covered in blood. These are all the details the silence can muster.

‘Are you all right?’

When he doesn’t answer, Mycroft releases the door. Before it swings shut, Sherlock hears another open at the end of the corridor, and hushed voices as a trolley rolls quickly along the floor.

‘Sherlock, are you all right? That can’t have been easy.’

He pulls his trousers up. He fastens the button and zips the fly, and his fingers push the end of a leather belt into the buckle. _It’s not real_ , he thinks, because he can’t think anything else.

‘It’s for the best. You’ll be able to explain to him one day.’

Sherlock’s head snaps ‘round. Words roar forth, bursting from nowhere like fireworks from the earth, fizzing through the blackness and about to explode, loudly; burning. That he’ll never be able to explain. Never. _Never_. 

But they don’t make it over his tongue. They die, as everything is dying today, when he sees a profile emerge in the windowpane framing Mycroft’s head. Molly. Which means…

…he’s moving before he knows why, propelled by the silence he needs to make noise. He can’t deal with nothing. He can’t _deal_ with _nothing_.

‘Sherlock - - Sherlock, no!’

He’s through the door. Molly yelps in surprise, and there’s a man on the other side of the gurney, and there’s a bag. A bag; a black bag, a body bag, and Mycroft does something he hasn’t done in twenty years or more, and grabs him as his hands stretch for the zip.

‘Are you insane!? What are you doing? _Sherlock_.’

‘I have to. I have to. Mycroft-‘

His voice is not his own. Fingers tighten in his throat, a voice croons _a bit more, you can take a bit more, my dear_ , and he snatches at breath just like he used to, when he wasn’t dead.

‘Sherlock?’ 

Molly sounds scared. Timid. His hands are shaking, and Mycroft will not let go.

‘Please,’ he says, and they exchange looks, the two of them. He can see she doesn’t understand, but can also see his brother has granted permission. Mycroft doesn't understand either. But he will, Sherlock knows. When he thinks about it.

 

*

 

Another room. This one is familiar. It holds trays of dead people, and it smells of chemicals. And underneath the chemicals, blood. Organs. The rotten bits of people, and gas, and the sickly hint of _wrong_ that denotes flesh. It’s never strong, just like infection isn’t always strong. But the human nose registers it as being not quite right and always rebels, even when you’re used to it.

Or maybe it’s because it is strong today. Because this body has not yet been made acceptable. It’s there, in it’s final state; having poured itself out it will now be pooling, and already starting to rot. He’s alone, but he knows Mycroft will be watching from the room next door, which joins on to the place where he, Sherlock, once sat at a microscope and was _not kind_ to Molly about her new boyfriend. Molly’s new boyfriend was not kind to Molly in the end. He was probably not kind to anyone in his life. Certainly not to Sherlock, but that was the way they both liked it.

 _It’s not real_ , he thinks. _Just a magic trick_ , and then he opens the bag, knowing the volunteer from the audience will have disappeared, to gasps of delight and surprise. 

But the smell of blood rises, and thumps him straight in the nose. He reels from the blow; chokes in shock, air punched from him again. The gasp is not of delight, but it is of surprise, and he can’t stop the keen of agony as the silence explodes, and explodes again, and keeps exploding over and over and over and _it’s real it’s real it’s real_.

Jim Moriarty is dead. 

There’s no question. His face is…wrong. He’s very white, as he should be with all the blood congealing around him, pooled in the bottom of his bag. His eyes hold no light. His mouth is open and Sherlock knows he shouldn’t, but can’t bear not to look; he bends, and sees…

…fuck.

He scrubs water from his cheek, only it keeps coming back. He straightens up. He’s seen gunshot wounds before, endless amounts of them. But…no, no, no, he can’t…not- - 

He touches his hair. There’s no blood on the front, and it’s very soft even with the gel. He remembers the feel of it before, that time they rested temple to temple, as close as their minds would ever get to touching. Except now, maybe. He puts his fingertips to the solidity of bone, and feels a tiny, almost imperceptible shift. He walks them backwards, parting hair slowly, watching the eyes in case they move, light up, and tell him this is all a horrible, terrible dream.

His fingers reach the edge of skull, and stop. A precipice too deep to fall over, a line too far. He could cut his finger on the edge of what he feels…and he does, once, letting his blood fall directly into the hole Jim has left behind. 

And then he turns, chokes, and retches. There’s nothing in him to throw up. There is nothing left at all.

 

*

 

Mycroft is concerned. Sherlock wants to scream at him that Molly can’t go in there. She can’t take his clothes off, even if she’s done it before. She can’t touch his insides, only Sherlock can do that. She can’t she can’t she can’t, _Jim does not belong to her_. 

But the voice behind the silence laughs, and tells him it’s just flesh, darling. Just transport. It doesn’t matter. 

Nothing matters.

Sherlock cannot process thought. He can’t move, and he can’t stand still. He can’t think, and he can’t talk. He can’t bear the silence. It’s not like being numb even if, physically, that’s exactly what it is. But numb isn’t a big enough word for this. He feels like if he let it all out, the world could not survive it.

‘Cremate him.’

That’s what he says. Mycroft’s eyebrows quirk upwards.

‘Please. Let him be ash.’

Mycroft says nothing. Sherlock looks at the blood on his finger. The cut doesn’t hurt. His body cannot register any more pain.

‘He’d want to be ash.'

 

 

 


End file.
